


Second Chances

by completetheory



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Mild Language, Nonbinary Character, Other, Post-Canon, Queer Friendly, Reconciliation, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23796319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completetheory/pseuds/completetheory
Summary: What consequences arise as a result of Bill invoking the Axolotl. ...Sort of.
Relationships: Bill Cipher/Ford Pines
Kudos: 18





	Second Chances

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadScientific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadScientific/gifts).



Grass rustled. The meadow was quiet. Bill Cipher, late of the second dimension, unceremoniously fell sideways into the third, and collided with gravity-enforced dirt.

“P’tew.” Bill spat, enjoying the gritty taste of the under-their-tongue grains, the who-knew-what microbes floating around in there. The mixture of saliva and dirt. It felt good just to be alive, to be free of the nebulous nightmare dimension where everything could be imagined and nothing actually mattered.

Nothing was real.

They took a deep and cleansing breath of the air (was that air? They breathed for fun, usually. Who knew.) and then scrubbed at their eye, becoming aware that their body was closer to an approximation of the bipedal, Sixer-y type, and yes, with the bonus finger on each hand. Fortunate that the scientific sap wasn’t here to see how easily attached they could be. That wouldn’t end well--

Oh, _sine._ The reason they’d ended up in hock to the axolotl rose up into their awareness, and they embraced the memory reluctantly. Operation: Earth House Party Don’t Stop had gone very badly. They’d almost managed to forget the whole debacle of coming into Gravity Falls, realizing their endgame made them miserable, kidnapping Ford, making _her_ miserable, holding the kids hostage, and then-... 

“Ohhhh.” 

Bill pushed the queasy feeling down, with the aid of long practice, and smiled even though no one was present, because even the act of smiling helped them to repress the more negative sensations. This time, it dissipated from their gut but sat uneasily at the back of their skull, like a guest who just wouldn’t take the hint and leave. 

Where was the axolotl, anyway? Where was Bill, for that matter? The meadow stretched out in all directions under a clear sky, feeling very genuinely limitless, and Bill groped for a plan, a sensation of mental stability to hang their next plan upon. If the axolotl was going to silently intervene to rescue them from the proverbial judgment of Osiris, followed by complete obliteration, perhaps it was better to accept that favor without asking questions.

But the further they walked, and the more nothingness they encountered, they began to wonder if this wasn’t part of the whole game. That creature was like one of the _aes sídhe_ , speaking in riddles and poems, it fucked with Bill the way Bill fucked with mortals, on occasion. Maybe not for the same reasons, but who could tell? 

Bill kicked a rock. It thudded unexcitingly down into the dust of the small worn pathway several feet ahead, and came to rest on its flattest side. Such a prospect was not welcome, as it reminded Cipher of the dimension of their birth - shapes of persons, assumed behaviors of those shapes. 

“You know what your problem is?” Bill addressed - the wind, the long grass. Whatever might be lurking in it. “If you were above it, you wouldn’t interfere. But you do. So you’re not any better than anyone else. In fact...” 

It had taken a while for Bill’s powers, even within Gravity Falls, to truly flower to the degree they was comfortable with in the nightmare dimension. So when they snapped their fingers at that moment, even they was somewhat surprised to see the successful result - a blossoming eye portal through which they could witness the forests of Gravity Falls.

“You’re the same as me.” Bill couldn’t see what they wanted right away, flickering in and out of the trees. Accustomed as they were to long periods of isolation, impatience moved under their brick patterned skin with barely a ripple. “All of you. You all want the same things...”

The kids were gone. The shack wasn’t empty, but the people in it weren’t of particular interest to Bill. More tourists, seeking a little thrill, looking for a curse like they were lonely for meaning and Bigfoot would solve it. Wasn’t that what Pinetree had come for? Wasn’t it what Sixer had wanted, way back when forever, and only thirty short years ago? 

Well, Sixer had received what she dared wish for in spades. Dimensions of wonder barely describable to other entities who had never left their own, but all parallel, and none perpendicular. All run of the mill to Bill.

 _They_ couldn’t describe how fucking gorgeous the third dimension looked to someone who hadn’t been trapped in the second, either. The sheer freedom, not just of movement, though the addition of a third axis was as welcome as oxygen, and they very much enjoyed fine tuning their retina to compensate for this new array - no, it was more than physical freedom. It was the promise of a social freedom where circles weren’t wholly holy, where the size and shape of one’s lines said absolutely nothing about one’s mental abilities or moral inclinations. 

That other dimension couldn’t be unfucked. And shouldn’t be, not by Cipher, anyway. They hadn’t broken it, they’d just been born to it, and frankly, the people there didn’t seem to want to be uncomfortable long enough to make any headway into fixing it. They killed people who even hinted at higher dimensional science. 

No fire was too hot for those who coded heresy as a crime.

Cipher threw the same flat rock experimentally at the portal, unsurprised to see it ripple and pass through without effect, to fall in the grass on the other side. So this dimension had the same ‘rules’ as the cobbled-together crawlspace of the Nightmare Realm, no leaving without physical flesh vessel. Flessel.

The daemon sat, serene in body, if not in mind, and continued to scroll through the vantage points. Most of them weren’t very helpful, but Bill was strangely pleased to see Gompers still looking healthy. What a good goat.

“If you’re watching, I hope I’m boring you.” They called, “Because this is boring me. So whenever you’re ready, you can--”

There - an orb of light that uncoiled embryonic to show the (deceptively?) cheerful face of the axolotl, god of gods, or at least big sibling of this particular dimensional branch. The rest of the entity continued to unspool from the center, until it floated in the air before the sitting daemon, looking as if they had not kept Bill waiting. 

Obviously that should be mentioned, but jovially. “Finally. Let’s talk business, huh? You may be in between time and space, but I’m hot to trot and get back to what I was up to. What do you want in exchange for a clean slate?” 

The feather-frills billowed in an oblique emotion that Bill was not suited to notice or describe, and again, in the silence, they felt the gut clenching discomfort of having come too far down a path to return. Keep those options open. Keep smiling. They can’t know the truth if you don’t tell them. 

Well, this one could. This one had facets upon facets, and some of them dealt uncomfortable prisms. That was why Bill had waited so long to key in the emergency favor. They didn’t even feel comfortable nicknaming this one - at least to their face.

“Second chances striven, mortal flesh remain.  
All trespass forgiven, nothing to explain.” 

Bill waited for an awkward few moments, feeling something twist in their chest uncomfortably at the idea that someone didn’t think they needed to explain themself. “Is that it? I don’t even get a stanza?” 

The axolotl swam in a circle, first clockwise, and then counterclockwise, seeming to bend time and space around them until they had created a doorway in the air between themself and Bill. 

“There’s got to be a catch.” Against Bill’s own best interest, sure that there was some hidden danger they might be better served to avoid, and yet... Nothing stopped them exiting the featureless purgatory into the rain-slicked parking lot of Greasy’s Diner. Nobody acknowledged them, as the late-night travelers walked past Bill to get into their cars and drive from the liminal restaurant to wherever they were going. Bill stood there like a bump on a log for many moments, feeling the confusion and numbness of someone who was sure there would be a reckoning, but-- for what?

‘Destroying’ their home dimension? If it could be destroyed by the truth that it tried so murderously to suppress, then it deserved to be. Too often, scientists and philosophers pulled forward with the yoke of dogma and superstition dragging against their efforts. Bill fancied themself neither, but still favored those, the eccentrics who believed in inquiry and novelty over the comfort of the familiar and illusory.

The phone rang. Bill picked it up, because that was what one did with phones, even if it was probably not anything to do with them.

“Hello?” 

It was Ford. Bill opened their mouth, but didn’t know what to say, trying to find some pithy one liner to disguise the gulf of loneliness and fear suddenly opening up inside them, exactly as they’d predicted, but it was all wrong because the Axolotl hadn’t deemed them fit for punishment, what if they were _right all along?_ What if this fumbling, fucked up mess had been... justified, somehow. 

“I know you’re there, Cipher. I was dreaming about you. Listen, I can’t explain it over the phone, or maybe ever. But I am sorry.” 

Sorry? Bill made words finally, picking up a thread of theatrical desperation. “Sixer, hey! How ya doin, old frenemy? How long has it been? Seriously. No idea!”

“Oh, good. It - probably about a year since everything. After-- and... Tell me something, if you can.”

“Shoot.” 

“Tell me you don’t hate me.” 

_Ohh._

“Yeah, no! Absolutely not.” Bill could reassure at least that much, without taking a risk and going further into uncharted feelings. “And if you hated me, you wouldn’t care about that, so I don’t have to ask.” 

“I _never_ hated you.” Ford sounded pained, at least to Bill’s hopeful interpretation, “Not even when I feared the worst, but ...I know why it seemed that way.” 

The phone made a quiet noise, and Bill scooped a coin from the return slot and fed the little monster, craving even the silence of a line between themself and Ford. “Hey, so. Where are you, exactly? Can you see the sky from there? Great view of Sagitta from here.” 

She half-snorted, “You’ll have to show me when I get back. If you like.” 

Bill thought about prisons of the body, and prisons of the mind, and this six fingered free thinker, and how close they had come to salting the earth between them. 

“Sure thing, Sixer. I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes, give or take. Then we can talk a little more freely! Because I just gave fifty cents to this thing.”

“I’ll --see you soon.” Ford said, and hung up. 

The wind played in the trees, and Bill shivered pleasantly at the unfamiliar chill, delighting again in any flesh sensation that was novel. 

Then they began the long walk into the woods, feeling the eyes of the Axolotl on them, possibly from the hollows in the trees. 

Let the frilly nuisance watch! This time, things would be different.


End file.
